Bitter Compounds from Cheddar Cheese

Abstract

Bitter peptides were isolated from Cheddar cheeses rendered bitter by milk coagulating agents and from nonbitter cheese. More than one bitter peptide apparently was produced by each coagulant. The peptides generally differed in such properties as elution volume from Sephadex gel, migration on silica gel, and relative amino acid composition. Bitter peptides contained relatively large amounts of aliphatic, acidic, and hydroxy amino acids but small amounts of basic and aromatic acids. The most consistent factors were relatively large amounts of glutamic acid, proline, leucine, and valine and the ratio of aliphatic to acidic amino acids (.8 to 1.3).